A shooter randomly fired at passersby in Philadelphia Monday night, killing five people, including a 15-year-old boy, and injuring two more.
The shooter was wearing a bulletproof vest and was armed with an AR-style rifle and a handgun. It’s not clear what their motive was, given that the attacker did not appear to target anyone they knew and the victims did not seem to have any connection with each other. The shooter was taken into custody after a chase on foot and has been charged with murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault, and simple assault, among other crimes.
The incident in Philadelphia was America’s 345th mass shooting — an incident during which four or more people are shot, as defined by the Gun Violence Archive — since the beginning of 2023.
It follows mass shootings at a Cleveland, Texas, home; a Sweet 16 party in Dadeville, Alabama; a bank in Louisville, Kentucky; at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee; at Michigan State University; at two mushroom farms in Half Moon Bay, California; and at a ballroom dance studio in Monterey Park, California.
These shootings come in the wake of numerous others last year including at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia; at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado; on a school bus allegedly targeting members of the University of Virginia football team; at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois; at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma; at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas; and at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
No other high-income country has suffered such a high death toll from gun violence. Every day, 120 Americans die at the end of a gun, including suicides and homicides, an average of 43,375 per year. Since 2009, there has been an annual average of 19 shootings in which at least four people are killed. The US gun homicide rate is as much as 26 times that of other high-income countries; its gun suicide rate is nearly 12 times higher.
Gun control opponents have typically…
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